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Excerpt One Night at the beginning of March 1980, the telephone rang in my apartment and my stepdaughter María Josefina answered. I was sitting in the farthest room, which Belkis had turned into a study. The person calling was Chomi Millar, chief administrator at the office of Fidel Castro. But María Josefina thought that the caller was Ramoncito Ante, a young man from the neighborhood who loved to play tricks on her over the telephone. When she realized who was really calling, she came running: "It's Fidel's office." Chomi asked me when I could come to the office of the Comandante in the Palace of the Revolution. I told him that I could be there in less than an hour. He made an appointment for ten the next morning. I was convinced by then that the efforts of Belkis, my sister, and my children, along with the support given me by my North American friends, headed by the dynamic Bob Silvers, not to mention the efforts of the PEN Club in New York, then presided over by Bernard Malamud, were finally having results. I also knew that Gabriel García Márquez was trying to sway the hard-liners in State Security. Although I never heard from him directly, he had sent messages on various occasions through Pablo Armando Fernández, whom he would run into in the hallways and dining rooms of Havana hotels. I got up early and arrived at the Palace right on time. I went to the main entrance and identified myself; a soldier escorted me to the office of a functionary, who had instructions to bring me to Fidel's office. The place had a North American air to it, but there were paintings by Mariano and Portocarrero on the walls. Chomi was dressed in an olive-green shirt and pants; he had olive skin himself and an unctuous manner. He had been my superior when he was rector of the University of Havana, but now he was receiving me in the capacity of replacement for Fidel's confidante, Celia Sánchez, who had died of cancer. Just then Fidel appeared, half real and half fiction. He told Chomi that he had left a few reports on his desk from members of the party in Camagüey; Fidel and I were then left alone. "How long has it been since we last spoke?" "Not long," I said. "No, I mean really had a conversation." "Almost twenty years," I said. "But I've been seeing your face almost constantly." "But we haven't spoken," I said. "True, it was in groups, but we have spoken." He looked at me for a few moments and then said, "You are fatter, but I am older. There have been many years of struggle." And he got up and started to walk around the room. "Your request to leave the country has been granted, just as it was granted for your wife, Belkis, last year. I don't deny that I would have liked for you to have direct personal experience of the work that is being done throughout the country, because-don't take me wrong-intellectuals are generally not interested in the social aspect of a revolution; they are interested only in their freedoms. I don't know what you all talk about, but you always wind up in a confrontation with the Revolution. You spend your time voicing opinions about our problems as if you were experts." He stopped, and then added vehemently, "I have already told everyone that I think you should leave, and I am not doing this under pressure from outside, although it is true that your wife even wrote to the Pope. You can go to any country you want." It wasn't so. The Cuban mission in Washington had told Belkis to move to New York. They refused to allow me to take a direct flight to Miami, and flying to Spain had been ruled out. "No one will touch your things or your books, and everything will stay as it is now. How much time did you ask for, two or three years?" "Three years." "Stay as long as you want, and when you want to come back, give me a call. If you are a true revolutionary, you will want to return . . . Don't get the idea that happiness is waiting for you on the other side; your exile will be nothing like you think it is going to be. Remember what happened to Nicholas Berdyaev when he left the Soviet Union." "There are differences," I said softly. "I am not talking about intellectual categories. I am talking about attitudes. Lenin knew his adversary better than those Russian exiles who were waiting for him when the Soviet government asked him to go to Paris. His was a temperament which could not comprehend history, just as yours is." I was silent. Then he said, "What is most obvious in your conduct over the past years is your blind hatred for State Security. Would you mind telling me what government on this earth is able to do without it? It is inevitable in a revolution. People who criticize a revolution may be mistaken, they may be sincere, but they are dangerous nonetheless. To create a new society, we have to demand national unity. Marx and Lenin are the prototypes of a revolutionary and they were both implacable with their enemies."
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